Many recreational games are played upon a large horizontal tabletop. Many tables are specifically designed to serve as a playing surface for a particular game, which game is played upon the table's top. Typical of these tables and games are pool tables for playing pool, ping-pong tables for playing ping pong, air hockey tables for playing air hockey, and others. Many of these table surfaces are long and wide, and require that the game table occupy much of the floor area in a room.
Numerous game tables of the prior art have attempted to provide a means for converting the table into a more compact configuration for storage in which less floor area is occupied. Generally, such tables allow the tabletop to be repositioned into a vertical orientation to reduce the required floor area. Many well known prior art Ping Pong tables, for example, have a hinged seam in the middle of the tabletop that allows the table to be vertically folded and horizontally compressed so that the table may be moved up against a wall and out of the way. But most game tables are not adaptable to allow the tabletop to be folded.
A British game table supplier by the name of BCE Ltd provides a line of pool tables having two pairs of legs, which are both adapted to be pivoted relative to the tabletop into a configuration wherein the legs are coplanar with the tabletop. One of the leg pairs is a base leg pair having a foot portion which remains on the floor as the tabletop is pivoted upwardly from its normal horizontal playing position to a vertically upright storage position. The second leg pair may then be pivoted downwardly against the tabletop to horizontally compress the table into a tall thin configuration for storage up against a wall. Knobs allow the user to tighten the hinges to avoid having the tabletop inadvertently fall down from this position. While such a storage system does minimize the amount of floor space required during storage, it lacks the convenience and safety of the present invention. Besides the inconvenience of the numerous steps required to convert the table between positions, by requiring that the user must separately fold the second pair of legs after the table has been pivoted to is upright position, it is necessary to convert the table to its storage position in an area of sufficient free space to allow clearance for the outwardly extending second legs. More importantly, if the second legs are not first extended and those knobs fully tightened prior to lowering the tabletop back down for play, the tabletop could collapse dangerously to the floor. And reliance on the proper tightening of the aforementioned knobs to ensure that the table does not accidentally collapse during use is not an acceptable to many users.
It is therefore desirable and an object of the present invention to provide a game table adapted to be quickly and easily converted from its normal playing configuration into a storage configuration in which a minimal amount of floor space is occupied.
Due to the size and weight of tabletops in general, it is an additional object to provide such a game table that allows such conversion to be accomplished safely and effortlessly.
It is a further object to provide such a game table that is positively and safely secured in both configurations.
It is a further object to provide such a table that requires a minimal number of operational steps for the conversion,
It is an additional object to provide such a table in which the conversion maintains the levelness of the tabletop when it is returned to its playing configuration after storage.
The above and other objects are addressed by the following embodiment of the present invention.